Sweet Dreams (Are on Your Nightstand)

While some recommend thinking about something boring as the ticket to going to sleep, I find the night train is more likely to arrive if I just let a random thought wander to the station. And if I ever feel stuck, Isol’s Nocturne: Dream Recipes Varied and Easy to Make (in just 5 minutes) (Groundwood, August 2012) could get me on board. Here is a book designed to be read at the rate of one page per night. Sturdily designed with a wire binding at the top and a sort of kickstand holding the thing upright, Nocturne‘s twelve pages each offer a different invitation to dream, like this:

Ah, “The Dream of growing,” lots of possibilities there. But wait:

Each of eleven pictures similarly augments itself via the magic of glow-in-the dark paint; a twelfth offers dreamers a blank page covered with the stuff on which they can draw their own wishes or totems. This wouldn’t be Groundwood if there weren’t an additional layer of weirdness, so the book includes “The Dream of the dead singer” (he leads a skeleton band) and “The roommate Dream” (a Wild Thing succubus) among the choices. Dream on!

About Roger Sutton

Roger Sutton has been the editor in chief of The Horn Book, Inc, since 1996. He was previously editor of The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books and a children's and young adult librarian. He received his M.A. in library science from the University of Chicago in 1982 and a B.A. from Pitzer College in 1978. Follow him on Twitter: @RogerReads.

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[…] of dream: “the dream of growing”; “the dream of being another”; “the cozy, warm dream.” Nocturne: Dream Recipes (2012) relies on special glow-in-the-dark ink to hide — and then give up — its secrets. When […]